Unknown Variable
by MouseMaster42
Summary: ON HAITUS UNTIL MY OTHER FIC IS FINISHED. PLEASE DON'T GIVE UP ON ME! X x What if Claire met Lando before she met Hershel? What would have happened? I think they have some cute chemistry going. Claire/Lando.
1. Chapter 1

**In an attempt to kill my horrific writer's block, I started trying to write things for the most random pairings I could think of that might actually have a shot of working. Between all of my random Marth/anybody-else and Nezumi/Sion obsessions, I started turning around the idea of Claire/Lando. It's my general thought that you can pair Claire up with just about anybody and it works, so I figured I'd give this a shot.**

** I tried to keep it so that this could have actually happened within the framework of the story, and just so I don't get flamed by Layton/Claire supporters, I'd just like to clarify that I SHIP CLAIRE/LAYTON TOO. It just so happens that I also ship Claire/Dimitri and now I ship Claire/Lando. X_x In my mind, she always ends up with Hershel though. With that said, I hope that people who support Claire/Layton can still enjoy this. :)**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. Professor Layton and all related thingimajigs belong to Level 5 and Nintendo.**

**Please read, enjoy, and then review!**

**xXx**

**Chapter 1: Meeting**

The sun was beating down on the golden fields, flashing off of the vivid hair of the boy standing in them. His face was tilted up towards the warmth, the hoe that he had been working with until recently held in a slackened hand. A slight smile decorated the boy's face, and his eyes were closed. He breathed deeply, simply lost in the miracle of the sky and the ground and the world in general.

His serene meditation was broken—although not unpleasantly—by the slight puttering sound of a car rolling down the gravel road. His eyes opened, fluttering like camera shutters as they got readjusted to the strong sunshine. After verifying that the noise that had disturbed him was in fact a car, and it was driving towards him, he dropped the hoe and bounded happily towards the fence, thinking that the car was carrying someone he knew.

He vaulted the fence with no difficulty, muscles rippling up bronzed arms ending in strong shoulders as he leapt over the four foot wooden barrier, and skidded to a halt at the side of the road, his dusty shoes scraping up a brief confetti of pebbles and clay. He held a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun and caught glimpse of the yellow car inching its way, almost shyly, down the road.

The farmboy pulled a face. The car was the wrong shade of yellow to be the one he was watching for. This car was too mustard-y. The one he knew should have been a slightly dirtier shade, the sort of yellow that instinctively brought the image of soiled trousers to mind. And one of the headlights should have been put out, and the side should have been dinged. All in all, the car that was easing its way down the road now was a much nicer vehicle and obviously not the one that the boy had been hoping for.

Nonetheless, he had run all the way out from the fields. He might as well say hello and not waste the trip. He thought absently that it was the gentlemanly thing to do, although he wasn't sure why something like that would concern him. The thought was an errant one, one that he was barely conscious of.

Just as he raised his hand in greeting to whoever the owner of the car was, it pulled to a stop and the driver's side window slid down, revealing someone who was definitely not the person the farmboy had assumed he would see.

Instead of one of the local neighbors who were all well past fifty-years old and nearly all male, he found himself looking upon a bespectacled young woman with curly brown hair and piercingly dark eyes.

He blinked. It had been awhile since he had seen somebody close to his own age, much less somebody who was as pretty as this woman.

The girl looked equally uncomfortable and fidgeted a little in her seat, and then visibly swallowed her pride and asked, "I'm terribly sorry, but could you point me in the direction of the University? I've gotten lost—but that's probably obvious, isn't it?" She looked down in her lap and laughed embarrassedly.

He found himself blinking dazedly again and made himself stop. "Oh, um…" He fumbled for a moment, but then regained his bearings. "You're nearly there, really. You just keep on down this road and then turn left at the next intersection. You keep on that one for a few kilometers—it's about a twelve and a half minute drive if you're driving the speed limit, and about a ten if you break it—and that'll take you into the city. From there you should be able to follow the signs." He finished and shoved his hands into his pockets awkwardly, wishing that he had met this beautiful girl under different circumstances. Preferably circumstances where he wasn't caked with dirt and sweat.

"Oh," she grinned and pushed her glasses up her nose in a very endearing sort of way. "Thank you so much. I can't believe I got so lost when I was so close." Seemingly on a whim, she thrust her hand through the open window. "I'm Claire, by the way. Claire Foaly."

The farmboy took the offered hand and took it, noticing how tiny her hand was. Tiny, but her grip was pleasantly firm. He mentally sighed, for he always hated this part of conversations.

"My name's Jack," he said dully, still feeling no more connection with the random name he had decided to take for his own than he had the first day he had chosen it.

"Nice to meet you, Jack," Claire said immediately. "Did they call you Jack because of your hair?"

He plucked at an orange strand that had fallen over his eyes and shrugged pathetically. "I suppose that crossed my mind. Jack O'Lanterns and all that…"

If Claire had found his use of the word 'I' instead of 'my parents'' odd, she didn't say anything. Instead she just kept smiling sheepishly at him through the window and said, "If you don't mind me asking, why aren't you heading off to school as well? You and I must be around the same age."

"Um…" He leaned up against the side of her car and adopted a joking tone as he said, "I'm getting a degree in agriculture, and they shipped me out here to intern."

Claire looked as if she at least partially believed him, so he quickly cleared up the confusion with, "No, I'm only kidding. You don't need to go to any school to be a farmer."

"So that's what you do?"

"Yes. Well, no. …Sorta?" the boy with no name fumbled, "I mean…I don't really know."

Claire laughed again, the sound reminding him of the bells the chimed on a clock. "How do you not know, Jack? You seem bright. Not every young man can give me the exact time it takes to get from a farm in the middle of nowhere into the city depending on whether or not I break the speed limit."

"I don't know," he repeated truthfully. With an impish grin that spoke of him having this same conversation many times before, he leaned in towards her window. "I honestly don't know."

Claire, who had been in the act of shifting her car back into drive, paused and turned slowly to look at him. Their eyes met, and something strange clicked between them.

"You really don't know," she whispered wonderingly. "…And that's not the only thing you don't know, is it? Are you lost? Short-term memory loss or something?"

"Nothing like that," he assured her. "I'm an amnesiac."

Claire's eyes widened even further. "So how much don't you remember?"

He smirked, unsure of why he was suddenly speaking to this girl, unsure of why he felt the need to tell someone. All he knew was that the words were suddenly tumbling out of his mouth, and he would have been nearly powerless to stop them even if he had wanted to, which he strangely didn't. "I don't remember anything before last year."

Claire started. "Wow."

"I know," he sighed, now fully expecting her to zoom away from him at any minute.

"So," she said quietly, dropping her hands away from the steering wheel to regard him with a piercing stare. "You honestly don't remember anything? You're not just pulling my leg, are you?"

"Zip," he confirmed. "I don't remember my name, I don't remember my past, I don't remember who my friends are, I don't remember my life until a year ago. It's like I was born into this world at age seventeen, which might not even be how old I am because I don't remember my own birthday." The words were pouring out faster now. These were things that had been eating away at him for nearly a year now, all of the unanswered questions that had been plaguing him ever since he had woken up. Ever since that awful moment when he had woken up and realized that he didn't know his own name. "That is why when I say I don't know, I am speaking the truth, Claire. I do not know who I was. I scarcely even know who I am, and even if I know who I am now, what if that makes me different than the me I was then? How does a person reconcile that?"

He realized that he was rambling and choked off, truly expecting Claire to stomp on the gas and speed off down the road, away from this strange, red-headed amnesiac.

Instead, she just sat there, watching him. After a moment he realized that he was practically leaning in her window and he beat a hasty retreat back to the fence. He paused there, rubbing at a patch of sunburned skin on his nose.

"So, um…You just keep on this road for a bit," he said lamely, his voice muted.

"Thanks, I got it," Claire said tersely, finally starting her car back up again.

He looked down at the grass, grappling with feelings that were in equal part wonderment and ashamedness.

"You know," Claire said thoughtfully, her voice floating over to him as her car started to roll down the drive. "You don't look like a Jack."

"What do I look like, then?" he couldn't help asking.

She smiled warmly at him, her brown hair stirring a little in the wind. "…I think you look like an Alaric," she told him, and there was an air of certainty, an air of rightness about the name. It wasn't like the name triggered a memory or anything like that, and he was nearly positive that the name wasn't the name he had been born with, but all the same…

"Alaric?" he echoed, rolling the name around his mouth experimentally.

"Yes," she nodded confidently. "That's definitely what you look like." She sped up a little, and now she had to shout to make sure her words reach him. "Thanks again for the directions, Alaric Amnesiac. Maybe we'll meet again someday!"

"You're welcome…and maybe," was all he could think to say, but by that point she was already down the road, juts a trail of dust that would soon be whipped away by the warm breezes of the countryside.

**xXx**

**Um, yeah. Alaric=Lando (I'm hoping everybody got that...). The first name to pop into my head was actually Cathan, but that seemed a bit off, and the next name I came up with was Rhys, but that didn't seem to suit him either, so I went with Alaric. **

**Apologies to anybody who has me on author alert for the Game. X_x I'll get back to that ASAP, but I've been tied up with other stuff lately. Rest assured that I'm not dead, and I fully intend to return sometime around the end of October when XC finally ends.**

**But anyways, Claire/Lando. Unusual pairings FTW. I hope you enjoyed. :)**

**Please review! If you liked it, I might do something else with this idea. **


	2. Chapter 2

**Yeah, writer's block isn't dead yet and this remains as the only thing that I can write. So you all get more Lando/Claire fluff. **

**Thanks to_ TheFabulousSophiaDescole13_; What exactly is at the wiki that I should be part of, I'm intrigued? Thanks to _Sogo;_ You would NOT believe what happened to my paper copy of this thing. XD Thanks to_ anon_; Yay! Spelling and grammer FTW! Thanks to the_ epic nameless anon1_; THIS MADE MY DAY thank you so much. XD I'm usually not up for non-canon either, but I thought this was sorta cute anyway. And thanks to_ nameless anon2_; *noms cookie***

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**Please read, enjoy, and review!**

**Chapter 2: Autumn, Year 1**

He lay face up in the bed, staring despondently up at the ceiling where the exposed rafters were fixed. He knew from the past winter that the farm house's loft, which had been generously given to him as his bedroom, got extremely cold as the seasons changed. He had honestly been meaning to fix one of the loose boards all summer, but now it was autumn—harvesting time—and the job was still undone. As it was, a breeze scented with the crisp smell of leaves and grass wafted down into the room. The smell itself was pleasant, but it triggered a negative effect in him. Everything around him seemed to flicker for a moment, and half-ghost images started to dance around the room.

He closed his eyes and succumbed to it, feeling his mind spiral off to forgotten memories and places. Unfamiliar sights flashed before him—seeming like they were so important that he couldn't believe he had ever forgotten them. There was a sudden feeling of euphoria as he recognized old faces, rediscovered what had been lost…There was a single moment where he became himself again, where he knew his own name…

But then he opened his eyes and it all disappeared.

The flashbacks were nothing new. They had begun right about the time the local university had started its classes. They could be triggered by the most random things, and he could never remember anything from them.

It was immensely irritating.

"Alaric!" called the farmer's voice up the staircase. "You have a phone call!" The elder man's voice was tinged with hope. For over a year now the two of them had been hoping for a call, for someone to come along asking for a young, red-haired boy who had disappeared a year ago…For the first month or so they had both practically lived in the front hallway, strategically placed between the front door and the telephone, but as time wore on, they had grown to expect the call less and less. But now…!

"I'm coming!" Alaric—who had adopted the name that college girl had given him simply because he felt it suited him more than Jack—shouted back and leapt out of bed, his heart suddenly pumping like a rabbit's as he flew down the stairs and snatched the phone out of the farmer's outstretched hand.

He held the receiver up to his ear, wondering who was on the other end of the line. His mother? His father? A sibling, or a friend, maybe? Somebody who knew him? Somebody who could tell him why couldn't remember anything?

"Hello?" he whispered.

"Is this Alaric?" asked a woman's voice.

His heart plummeted. Nobody but people who knew him after the incident would even think of calling him by that name.

Trying and spectacularly failing not to sound disappointed, he mumbled, "This is he."

"Oh," the person's voice fell as well. "Is this a bad time? This is Claire. Claire Foaly, remember? I know we met a long time ago, but…"

Surprisingly, a little of the pain disappeared when he realized that it was Claire on the other end of the phone. "It was only a few months ago," he said defensively, shifting the phone to his other hand so he could make a nugatory sign at the farmer, who was hovering like an overprotective parent in the doorway. Alaric smiled reassuringly as he made the symbol to show that he was alright, and then pointed at the receiver in his hand and mouthed 'Claire' before he spoke aloud again. "I mean, of course I remember you. What can I help you with?"

"It's sort of stupid, actually," Claire said, and he imagined her twisting the phone cord in her hand. "I need some help on a history project, actually."

"Alright, go for it. What do you need?" he sighed, running a hand through his rumpled hair. "Don't know why you think I'd be of any special help to you though."

"Oh my gosh!" Claire exploded, the resulting squawk of noise nearly blowing out his eardrum. "I am so sorry! It never even occurred to me to ask about your amnesia. You're not better yet, are you? Y—you answered, didn't you? You answered to Alaric. I'm so sorry, I didn't even think…"

"It's fine," he chided. "I'm still Alaric for a bit longer. But what makes you think I could help you with history."

She paused, and then decided that it was fine to let the matter go and continued. "Well, it's not so much that you in particular can help me as it is that nobody else really can."

"How so?" Alaric asked as he leaned up against the wall and tucked the phone under his shoulder so he could accept the plate of scrambled eggs that the farmer passed to him from the kitchen.

"Well…" she trailed off, and then blurted everything out in a rush. "I'm in this history class because it's required for my major, and we're doing this group project where we have to research an invention, and everybody in my group is male except for me, and they're all extremely proficient in the area already and they're all sort of intimidating, and I would just love to have something to bring to the table, but I don't know anybody yet and I'm not quite sure if freshmen have access to the library yet and you're sort of the only person in a fifty mile radius who I actually sort of know and I just…thought…"

He 'hmm'ed in a sympathetic sort of way because his mouth was full and swallowed to say, "So what's the project on?"

"The wheel," Claire said in a quiet voice. "But, you know, it's honestly alright if you can't remember. Don't feel bad or anything." She laughed embarrassedly, and he could imagine how red her face must be and how grateful she must be that he couldn't see it. "I'm not even sure why I called you…"

He was about to regretfully tell her that, no, he didn't remember anything. He opened his mouth to say the apologetic words, but something completely different came out instead.

"The wheel," he heard himself say in a lecturing sort of tone. "Was invented in the Paeolithic Era, somewhere from 15,000 to 75,000 years ago. The wheel probably first started out as a log roller, and eventually the idea of an axel and then a steerable axel were added by the Mesopotamians. The Egyptians are credited with being the first to add spokes to the wheels, making them much lighter. The first wheel that we've found was actually used as a potter's wheel and not used for transportation, but it makes sense that the wheel had actually developed long before this first wheel that we've found because most of the original wheels were made of wood, and the wood would have deteriorated long ago."

Over the line, Claire gasped.

Alaric blinked, and the world about him suddenly seemed to flicker, like an old television set. He felt himself sag against the wall, and the phone and plate both dropped from his hands to clatter against the floor.

"ALARIC?" Claire and the farmer both shouted, the farmer jumping into the hallway to grab the boy's shoulders before he completely fell over, Claire's voice coming out tinny and small through the telephone.

"I'm fine," Alaric whispered, and then repeated it more firmly. "It's alright, I'm fine!" He scrabbled around the broken plate shards for the phone and pulled it up to his ear. "It's alright Claire, I'm fine."

"Alaric, that was not normal," Claire said nervously. "What just happened? There was a crash or something…?"

"Yes. I dropped my eggs."

"….Your eggs?"

"Yes," he explained tiredly. "I was eating eggs, and I dropped them. "

"And this somehow miraculously triggered your memory of all things wheel-related?" Claire asked skeptically.

He had no comeback, so he settled for explaining what had happened, concluding with, "And it just came back. I wasn't even trying to remember it."

"That's usually how amnesiacs remember things," Claire said, reinforcing his theories. "Perhaps you're getting your memories back?"

"But it's just the wheel, at the moment. Any school-kid could've known the things I just said."

"Oh, gee thanks," Claire droned unhappily. "That really made me feel smart."

He found himself laughing. "Alright fine. Maybe not any school-kid. Maybe only a school-kid who was interested in history."

Claire's voice was hushed. "So you think you were interested in archeology and history?"

"I think I was," he said distantly, feeling the truth of the words as he spoke them. Tiny little facts began to unearth themselves as he spoke, blurry images of classroom dancing behind his eyelids.

"Well," Claire said awkwardly after a very long pause. "I think you really helped. I have quite a bit to say now for my group project."

"I'm glad," he said warmly, waiting for her to say some sort of farewell and hang up.

Instead, she said, "So I was thinking…"

"Yes?"

"If your memory really is coming back, I was thinking that it might be sort of interesting to stay in contact with you, just from a scientific perspective," Claire said nervously. "I'm studying to be a type of human scientist, you see—oh I'm sorry, that sounded really rude, didn't it? I didn't mean it like that—it's not like you'll be my test subject or anything!"

The hand that was holding the phone up to his ear clenched. "Then what will I be, if not your test subject?"

Her answer was quick and unhesitant. "You'll be my friend, of course! Not to mention that I can apparently count on you to be my history tutor until I start to make some friends on campus. Would that be alright?"

"Sure," he grinned. "Of course, Claire."

"We'll meet again soon then, alright?" she said forcefully.

"Alright," he said quietly as he realized the full implications of what he had just agreed to. He had a friend. His first friend in over a year.

"…See you soon then, Alaric," Claire said shyly, and then hung up.

He stood there in the hallway with the broken plate and cold eggs scattered on the phone around him for a long time, holding the empty phone and staring out of the window at the blue autumn sky. It wasn't until much later that the giddy smile finally disappeared from his face, and he set the phone down.

He knew it would ring again soon.

**xXx**

**There is potentially more to come. I don't really have any comment. :)**

**Please review!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry about the wait. I got back into working on my main fic, but now I have a guest-author chapter that I'm waiting on (No offense to him, I love the guy—it's totally worth the wait), so I came back to this. I suppose it's a good thing for you. :D**

**Thanks to _Sogo_; I learned EVERYTHING from the wheel project, girl. And…yeah…I told you how I originally lost the paper copy of this, but my pen ended up not running, so it was salvaged! ~ Thanks to _SophiaDescole13_; Everything I know of Lando and of the Mask of Miracles I learned FROM the wiki, so I'm not sure how much help I'd end up being. (sorry! xD) Anyway, I'm glad that you enjoy the style. Thank you so much. (BTW, you work on the wiki, right? Could you please please pretty please (with a cherry on top) make a page about Crow from the Last Specter? That kid is so awesome that he needs a page.) ~ And thanks to PM0; Woot! Crack-pairings FTW! However, this is more serious than most crack-fics, wouldn't you say? Well…maybe not this chapter, but the majority of it! XD**

**Disclaimer: In the words of the dude who owes me a chapter: I own nothing, I regret nothing, I let them forget nothing. And I stole his awesome signature because it's awesome—it has nothing to do with the fact that I couldn't think of something intelligent on my own! (Nope, no laziness here. None at all.)**

**Please read, enjoy, and review!**

**Chapter 3: Winter, Year 1**

He was squatting by the side of the road, watching his breath blossom in white clouds in front of his face. A thin layer of snow had already covered the ground, and huge flakes were silently floating down around him. Vague memories of sculpting snow into ellipsoids to throw at a blurred, brown-haired boy hovered around in the back of his mind. He was aware of the memories, but they no longer distracted him like they had several months ago.

The blurry boy had started cropping up in his dreams recently, and the more Alaric pondered him, the more he realized exactly how often the boy appeared in his flashbacks. They were together so much that he had to wonder if they were related. Cousins, or brothers, maybe. But, annoyingly, he couldn't pull together any concrete face, much less any sort of name.

His gloved hand started tracing patterns into the wet snow that sort of resembled hieroglyphics, but he could already tell that they weren't of the Egyptian variety. Maybe he had created then himself, or perhaps he and the brown-haired boy had created them together. It didn't really matter much at this point: he had no idea what the marks meant, and they triggered no reaction in and of themselves, so he mostly disregarded them.

While he was writing, a familiar mustard-colored car pulled up to a muffled stop on the roadside. A college girl with booted feet, a red nose, and frosted over glasses stepped out into the slush and immediately squatted down next to him shamelessly, hardly caring that her skirt hem was getting wet and a bit more leg was exposed in the gap between the hem and the top of her high socks than was generally acceptable. It wasn't outrageous, but it was abnormal. As usual, she didn't care. Alaric had witnessed her wear far more outlandish outfits since he had met her. He actually considered her current attire as a sign that perhaps she was settling down.

"What's that say?" Claire Foaly asked, pointing to the markings.

He glanced up and smiled, tugging his flannel scarf away from his mouth to say wryly, "You're early, and I don't know."

Claire frowned curiously, and then reached into the leather bag that she had slung over her shoulder and pulled out a pencil and a notepad.

He looked up again, his finger pausing mid-character. "What are you doing?"

"I'm writing that stuff down, silly," she said, crouching down next to him instead of across so that she could copy the snow writing from the right orientation. "You never know what'll turn out to be important."

He shrugged in an 'if-you-say-so' manner and stood up, cracking his neck as he did so. "Alright, suit yourself. Shall we go?" He offered her his hand, which she grabbed without hesitation as soon as she had shoved her notepad back into her bag. He tugged, and she lurched to her feet, her boots sliding in the slush.

He grabbed her elbows before she completely stumbled into him. "You're light," he commented lightly as he helped her regain her balance.

She flushed and quickly stepped backwards. "Or you're just strong, farmboy."

He grinned, and reached over to open the driver's side door of Claire's car for her. "Whatever you say, Mademoiselle. Let us be off." He tossed himself in the passenger's seat as Claire twisted the ignition on.

As the car rumbled to life and the heat blasted into their faces, Claire asked, "Alaric, do you speak French?"

"Nein," he teased. "I only speak English. If I know anything else, I don't remember. Where are we going to study this time anyway?"

Claire reached over to swat his boots off of the dashboard and then wrenched at the sticky gearshift. "We're driving into town where there's a coffee shop that I like. It's quiet, so we'll be able to study there."

He nodded as the car started to roll forward and glanced out of the window. "Are college finals different from the high school ones?"

"I suppose not," Claire said thoughtfully, pushing her glasses up her nose. "But they are sort of scary. There's so much more pressure on the students in college." She flashed a smile in his direction and cranked up the heat even more. "But I'm doing alright. The only concern is history, and that's where you come in, Alaric!"

"I'm sure you'll do fine," he said kindly.

They somehow made it into the city without incident, although it took them much longer than twelve and a half minutes to do it. He didn't mind, particularly, but the heat of the car was growing a little stuffy towards the end, and while the lively conversation had been enough to distract him for the majority of the ride, he could feel his hairline starting to dampen above the collar of his thick jacket.

"All I'm saying," he joked as he stepped out of the neatly parked car into what was evolving from a flurry into a blizzard and slipped over to Claire's door to open it for her. "Is how do you _know _that penguins can't fly? Maybe they just don't want to."

"They can't! They don't have the right bone structure!" Claire, who had claimed to have been at the top of her advanced biology class in high school, protested gamely. "The wing to weight ratio is completely off! And—!" she added upon catching the mischievous glint in his eye. "—To save you to the trouble of asking, penguins did not have anything to do with the spread of the migratory coconut."

"What about African penguins?" he asked, shouldering open the door to the little coffee shop and taking Claire's hand to guide her as her glasses fogged up.

"Absolutely not!" she laughed and waved over a waiter, who sat the two of them in a booth towards the end of the homey restaurant and then retreated once Claire had said that she'd like 'the usual' and Alaric—at Claire's insisting—ordered a hot chocolate.

"We go to a _coffee _shop and you want me to order a hot chocolate?" he asked as Claire yanked out several textbooks from her bag and let them fall onto the table.

"Look, the hot chocolate here is really really good," Claire enthused as the steaming mugs arrived. "Honestly; try it."

He took a sip, being careful not to burn himself, and blinked, startled by the flavor. It literally tasted like somebody had melted a bar of chocolate into his mug.

"Good, isn't it?" Claire said brightly as she started to paw through a pile of lecture notes.

He smirked. "Would it be cliché if I said I couldn't remember the last time I've drank anything this good?"

Claire laughed. "Yes, it'd be clichéd, but true."

He—with great difficulty—pushed the mug away to let it cool and started trying to read Claire's sloppily written notes upside-down. "What do you need help on, exactly?"

"Everything!" Claire cried miserably. "I can't remember anything! I'm going to fail, and I'm going to be kicked out of the program, and then my parents are going to kill me—"

"No, you'll be fine," he said wearily as he pried the notebook out of her hands to look at it. "See?" He flipped through the filled pages, showing that there weren't as many as Claire seemed to think. "It's not bad. You can do it. We'll take it slowly, alright?"

"Alright," Claire echoed, her voice mild. But it regained its usual aggressive tone again as she pointed her index finger at him and declared, "But I'm now holding you responsible if I fail!"

"Feel free, because you're not going to fail," he said determinedly, picking up a pen to start underlining and starring things that were important.

Five rounds of hot chocolate, several bathroom breaks, multiple stretching breaks, numerous sidetracks and many hours later, Claire was finally semi-confident in her ability to take her exam, and they were getting ready to brave the blizzard again.

"Thank you so much, Alaric," she said happily as she did up the buttons of her coat and bent over to tie the laces of her boots. "I don't know what I would have done without you."

"Any time," he said with a smile. "I'm sure you'll end up doing well."

They walked up to the counter together, and Claire started to lay down the money to pay for the hot chocolate, but he shot out his hand to stop her.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked sharply, forcing her hand holding the money to return to her side. "The college girl shouldn't be treating the man who actually has an allowance."

"Alaric!" she protested, trying to fight his grip on her wrist. "It's my thank-you! Let me pay it. I never got to thank you for all of the tutoring you've done for me!"

"You can pay me back when you get a job," he retorted. "But until then." With a note of finality, he slammed the money down on the countertop for the mustachioed cashier to take, and Claire finally twisted out of his hand and stomped furiously on his foot.

Wincing and fighting the urge to laugh at her immaturity, he said, "Just think of it as the Christmas present I forgot to get you."

"I forgot to get you a Christmas present too," Claire pouted. "It's not fair."

"It is fair and you know it," he insisted forcefully as he tied his scarf and made for the door, assuming she'd follow. "I mean," he said over his shoulder. "You've already given me—"

"Alaric…" Her voice was accompanied by a hand on his shoulder, turning him around to face her, and then he was only aware of her throwing her arms around his shoulder and leaping into him. He staggered backwards, unsure of what he was supposed to be doing, and then she kissed him on the cheek and he stopped trying to figure it out.

She stepped back after a long moment, biting her lip awkwardly and clasping her hands behind her back. Her face was red, and he assumed his was too. Somewhere in the seating area, several people were applauding, and the male cashier was scowling at them and grinding tombstone-like teeth.

"Merry Christmas," Claire whispered meekly. Then she nodded at the furious cashier, muttered "See you later, Paul" under her breath, latched onto Alaric's arm, and towed him out of the café.

He went along with her, stumbling out into the snow as he wondered why he was hardly thinking about Claire at all, but was instead getting the strange, vague memory of whiteness floating across his mind.

Claire was laughing—in equal parts delighted and embarrassed by her previous actions as she shouted at him to help her clear off her car, and he lurched through the drifting snow to do as she asked.

A snowball suddenly pelted him in the side of the head, and he was so startled that he staggered into a drift, looking up to see Claire beaming at him.

"Just so you think I haven't gone soft or anything," she teased, holding another missile aloft. For a moment, the brown-haired boy's image was superimposed over her face, but the vision vanished almost as soon as he noticed it.

As he rolled to the side to dodge her second attack and leapt to his feet to chase her across the street, he felt that vague, white, ticklish memory slip out of his fingertips.

For whatever reason, this made him sad. He had the lingering feeling that the memory had been connected to someone important. But…he pondered as he chased this auburn-haired college girl down the street, their footsteps leaving behind obvious footsteps to trace them by…with all that he had, he should be feeling lucky, not sad.

And so he dismissed the memory, and left the white presence and the brown-haired boy in the past, where they both belonged.

**xXx**

**Sorry if the kiss wasn't exactly your cup of tea. It was friendly (on Claire's part, at least), not really romantic. I'm trying to start working more of the Layton characters you know and love into this thing. Please let me know how I did!**

**And yes, Don Paolo (did I spell that right?) totally worked in a coffee shop when he was in college. XD It sounded sort of like something he'd end up doing. **

**Just to clear this up: in this fic I have the generation of boys (Alaric/Lando, Paul, Layton—who will be popping up eventually) as a year older than Claire. Dimitri—if/when he shows up—will be four or five years older. **

**More to come! **

**Please review!**


	4. Chapter 4

***0* I have more than one reviewer! WOOT! **

**Thanks to_ SophiaDescole13_: Hey, Sharon/Lando is how it eventually ends up, so it's cool that you ship it. :3 And yep, the white memory is Sharon. He doesn't remember names, and for whatever reason the only thing he remembers of her at the moment is her hair colors, but he doesn't realize it's just her hair. XD ~ Thanks to _PM0_: I'm really glad that you find it adorable. :) Paul totally would work in a coffee shop, wouldn't he? XD ~ And thanks to _Fluffehkinz_: Woot! Thank you very much. :)**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing, I regret nothing, I let them forget nothing. MoD you still owe me a chapter, goshdarnit! **

**Please read, enjoy, and then review! I'm WAY more likely to update if I get reviews. **

**xXx**

**Chapter 4: Spring, Year 1**

The crops were just starting to grow—tiny little green chutes jutting up from the ground. He thought of them fondly; those little plants who were new to this world, planted by his own hand just a few weeks ago. The new season gave him purpose, reminding him that there was still a wonderful world he could participate in, even though he still couldn't remember the world he had been a part of nearly two years ago.

Even now, as he stood in the middle of the field in the cool spring sunlight, that world seemed trivial, unimportant, and best-left forgotten. The past was past.

He leaned on the hoe, admiring the little baby plants, a grin creasing his face as he squinted into the sun. Everything was perfect in his life—wrapped in preciousness and quiet and peacefulness. He felt like he was just starting to unearth himself again, like he was being reborn. Instead of Jack, the quiet amnesiac boy who frequently pondered his own misfortunes and clung to the scraps of memory that he had, he was Alaric. Just Alaric. A man who stood tall in the field and had an opinion of his own; had a personality; had friends.

He was startled out of his thoughts by the familiar puttering of an engine, and he dropped the hoe without hesitation and dashed to the fence, hopping over the aisles so as not to accidentally crush one of his creations.

"Claire!" he cried as the dinged mustard-colored car eased to a stop at the side of the road, and Claire stepped out of the car and waited for him to vault over the fence and run to her side.

Her face was anxious, and she was twisting the hem of her yellow summer-dress in her hands. "Hello Alaric," she said, and her voice was tight, like she was trying desperately not to blurt something out.

"Oh no," he murmured when he saw her expression and caught a glimpse of the white slip of paper that was fluttering in the country wind. "I thought you said you were fine! That you knew everything! Don't tell me you got a poor grade…! Give it here."

He held his hand out for the paper expectantly, and she held it out to him with a shaking hand. He snatched it from her fingers and squinted at the letters until he realized that she had given him her report card, as he had suspected. "Claire, I swear if you're fooling around I'm going to…" His eyes frantically skimmed the page until he found the 'history' grade.

…It was an A. It was low, but still an A.

He looked up disbelievingly to see that Claire had skipped a few steps away from him, just out of arm's reach. "You're going to what, Alaric?" she asked teasingly.

"This." He threw the report card into the field and sprang after her when she dashed for the fence to retrieve it. She leapt over the barrier and nearly tumbled in the ditch that she hadn't realized was there, but she stayed on her feet and ran headlong into the field after the scrap of paper, laughing when he warned her not to step on the plants.

She danced between the aisles, snatching up the report card before it could blow away and tucking it into her jacket pocket. Still he ran after her, laughing breathlessly with the exhilaration of it. She abandoned the treacherous field and leapt back over the fence, her skirt and coat flying out like wings behind her. She landed surely this time and sprinted down the road towards the farmhouse, daring him to follow her.

Still laughing, he obliged, twisting himself up and over so he was hopping from fencepost to fencepost and gaining fast on Claire, who realized belatedly that she was in trouble.

She screamed as Alaric leapt from the fence and landed on her shoulders, sending them both careening into the ditch next to the road. He, unfortunately for Claire, mostly ended up on top of her, and he quickly scrambled backwards so that she could breathe.

"Are you okay?" he blurted. "I'm sorry, Claire. I didn't know you'd fall like—well, I did, but I wasn't thinking, really, I guess…Are you okay?"

Claire was gasping for breath in-between fits of giggles, sprawled across the grass. Her hair had come out of its ponytail and was flung in an auburn halo behind her head, and her grass-stained dress had flipped out across her knees. Her arms were flung out to her sides, palms up, fingers shaking as she tried to stop laughing enough to speak. To Alaric, she looked like a snow angel. A spring-snow angel. A laughing angel.

He felt his shoulders start to shake, and he succumbed to the laughter as well, falling onto his back as the chuckles wracked his entire body.

Claire recovered first, crawling over onto her stomach and scooting over so that her face appeared over his. Her face, behind her glasses, was flushed red from all of the excitement. "That," she declared boldly, "Is the most fun I've had in a long time, Alaric."

"Were you referring to this school year, or this little chase just now?" he asked, his voice somewhat hesitant given their close proximity.

"Both," she said fondly, and brushed a strand of crimson hair out of his eyes.

"Me too," he replied, surprised by the conviction he found himself speaking with. "It's been much more fun being with somebody than just being on my own."

"Exactly," Claire agreed with a grin, but her face grew serious again as she continued, "But honestly, Alaric—and I don't care if this sounds weird—I'm glad you were my somebody. It wouldn't have been as fun if you had been somebody else."

He blinked, and then pushed himself up onto his elbows so he could look Claire in the eye. Her dark eyes were downcast, and her face was flushed, like she was embarrassed. That odd white presence nagged at his brain again, but he pushed it away; burned out the white with a red-gold fire. "I'm glad you were my somebody too," he said quietly. "Claire, it's because of you that I am who I am. I am Alaric because of you."

She smirked. "When I met you, you were Jack."

"So I was," he said. "And before that I was somebody else. But I am neither of those people now, and it's thanks to you."

For some reason, this gave Claire pause. He was confused. Surely she had pondered this before—he had pondered that thought constantly at first, the fact that she had named him, essentially raised his 'newborn' self….

Claire sat up completely, hugging her knees to her chest. "I wonder," she said thoughtfully, fiddling with the toggles on her jacket. "If your best friend would recognize you anymore."

Alaric blinked, startled by that question. He had never really thought about the fact that perhaps he was changing into a different person. He always just assumed that he was essentially unearthing the same personality he had had before. It was strange to think that whatever had made him essentially 'him' before he lost his memory was no longer there.

"It doesn't matter," he said thickly. "Since my best friend never came looking anyway."

Claire reached out and took his hand, and the gesture felt familiar and safe. His fingers curled around her small palm as he looked up to hear what she would say.

"Alaric Amnesiac," she said firmly, and he couldn't help but smirk at the old nickname. "I don't believe that you can change a person's essential core. You can drop them in different circumstances, and perhaps they may develop a little differently, but I believe that we are all born a certain way, and it's impossible to change that."

She averted her eyes suddenly, but then looked back at him just as quickly as she had looked away. "So that's why I don't believe for a moment that you were anything but a nice guy, Alaric. What your name is or who your friends are isn't going to change that fact. So I can't think that your best friend wouldn't have come looking for you. I am positive that he or she…"

"It was a he," he inserted, vaguely remembering a brown-haired boy. And snowballs…and a cave. That was all the brown-haired boy had left him with.

"Well, whatever," Claire said dismissively. "I'm positive that he would have come looking for you. Nobody can give up on a guy like you."

He smiled warmly at her, and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. "Thanks," he said, feeling like a weight had lifted from his shoulders. "But at the same time—while I'm happy to know that I probably had a decent life before, is it weird to think that I don't really _want_ to remember it?"

Claire thought about that, and then shrugged. "It's strange, sure, but then…" She bit her lip, looking like she was about to deliver some upsetting news. "…You _are _a bit strange, Alaric."

He laughed merrily and stood up, pulling Claire up with him. "This sounds an awful lot like a goodbye," he remarked. "We're saying all these things to one another that we haven't said before…Why aren't we talking about normal things, like we always do? Like coconuts? Whatever happened to the coconuts, Claire?"

With no warning, Claire suddenly hugged him, cutting off his rant. "It_ is_ sort of a goodbye, idiot," she said, her voice muffled by his shoulder. "It's summer vacation. I'm going home to my family." She lifted her head to look at him. "I won't see you for at least three months."

"We'll write," he enthused. "I gave you my address, remember?"

She nodded. "And you still have mine?"

He smiled down at her. "Completely committed to memory."

She sighed explosively, blowing her bangs out of her face. "No offense, Alaric, but your memory isn't exactly the most reliable thing in the world."

"Then I'll write it down," he promised. "I'll write it in giant letters and tack it up on my wall, right by my bed, so I'll look at it every day and it'll be impossible for me to forget." He took hold of Claire's hand again and held it to his chest. "I won't forget you, Claire," he promised. "And when school begins, and if we haven't gotten sick of talking to one another yet, I'll be waiting right here, just like I was when we first met."

"You weren't really 'waiting' then," Claire pointed out, making the remark only to buy her some time to process the depth of what Alaric had just promised her.

"Perhaps I was."

Claire stood up on her tiptoes to kiss his sunburned cheek, and gave his hand a final squeeze. "See you in September, then?" she clarified.

He nodded eagerly. "Of course, Claire."

She beamed, and then took a step back, like she had gotten what she wanted. He leaned back on the fence, smiling as he looked down at the grass-stains on his pants. When he looked up again, she was already in the car, firing up the engine.

As the car sped off down the road, Claire waved out of the driver's window and shouted something, but the noise of the motor made it impossible to discern words. And then she was gone. Just a cloud of dust that quickly shimmered away into nothingness.

But he supposed it didn't matter. He would just ask her what she had said when he wrote—which he intended to do almost as soon as possible. But he must be careful not to be too eager. That was what the farmer had told him.

He was told that he must be eager (but not too eager), and kind (it was okay to be too kind), and understanding, for girls were susceptible to moods, weren't they? Claire wasn't. Sure she was bouncy and serious, but that was normal, right? The farmer seemed to think that girls were nothing but a sack of hormones waiting to be pushed the wrong way, but Claire was wonderfully honest and true and…clear.

The farmer had also warned Alaric about trying to go too fast, about making sure to be friends before asking for anything else. After all, what they had could barely be counted as friendship, could it? A sporadic handful of study-meetings with only a few true get-togethers—and they were of such social difference as well. He had no money to speak of and was working on a farm, and Claire was in college, studying something very advanced, although he had never quite found the opportunity to ask what it was…

Alaric's thoughts were coming fast and hard now that he realized that he wouldn't see Claire for a whole three months, and that was a surprising emotion in and of itself because he wasn't supposed to be thinking of her too seriously, but he was and now that she was gone what else was there to think about? What had he thought about before Claire came?

He tried to calm down as he looked again at those green chutes in the field. He made himself take a deep breath, and forced himself to look at things clearly. He let his eyes close, and took a minute to sort through the jumble of feelings he had, and then smiled as he reached a conclusion and struck off towards home.

The conclusion that he had reached was simple, and easy: he was in love. He was suddenly so convinced of this feeling that had been growing for nearly a year now, that he—for the first time—allowed himself a tiny ray of hope, that maybe, someday, Claire would come to a similar conclusion about him.

**xXx**

**This fic is written in snapshots (as you will have no doubt figured out by now), so they've actually known each other for nine months at this point. It's perfectly reasonable for them to be a little cuddlier than in the last chapter. X_x Please don't flame me on that. **

**The reason I have them moving so fast towards a romantic thing is because I plan to have at least one of the main boys (Dimitri and Hershel) come up in the next chapter, and I want them to at least sort of have a romantic base before I throw another love-interest in there. Who do you think should appear first? :D Layton or Dimitri?**

**Please review! I swear I'll update faster if you review. :)**


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